


Indian Summer

by aghamora



Category: How to Get Away with Murder
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Pregnancy, Season 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-19
Updated: 2016-10-19
Packaged: 2018-08-23 09:49:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8323303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aghamora/pseuds/aghamora
Summary: In which Laurel is pregnant. And no one is handling it well - least of all Laurel herself.





	

**Author's Note:**

> LORD after last week's episode I just couldn't not write something, so this monster got written all in one day. It's the same drabble-y style of the last few ficlets I've published (if you can call something that's 10k words a ficlet) and might be a bit of a mess but... I had to. This also maybe is a bit unrealistic when it comes to the timeline of Laurel's pregnancy currently, but oh well. Science? Don't know her.
> 
> Enjoy ;P

So she wakes up, in the hospital, under the fog of some kind of pain meds, head heavy and body aching and _everything_ aching, and her mouth full of ashes, face dirty with soot. An IV in her arm and a tube jammed down her throat. She moves and it hurts. She stays still and it hurts. It _all_ hurts.

And the smiley blonde nurse in light blue scrubs tells her she’s in a hospital, like she couldn’t have deduced that for herself. And that she has four broken ribs, a few other sundry broken bones, second-degree burns, a punctured lung. And that they’re treating her for smoke inhalation.

And – oh, that she’s _pregnant._ Like it's an afterthought.

“What’re you talking about?” she manages to croak, voice raspy once they remove the tube from her throat, at the doctor who comes in to check up on her; a stout middle-aged man with grey hair, who raises his eyebrows in shock at the question. “I’m not… I-I’m not pregnant.”

“Your lab results came back positive. You are. Five months, as a matter of fact.” He blinks, looking at her like she’s crazy. “We… assumed you knew, by now.”

She just stares at them, wide-eyed, too weak to move. “That can’t… th-that can’t be right, I’ve been… having my period, and-”

“Some women report having intermittent vaginal bleeding similar to a period while pregnant. It’s rare, but-”

“I’m not _pregnant_ ,” she sputters, trying to muster up enough of her voice to raise it but unable to. She looks to the doctor, then to the nurse, then back and forth again, trying to discern if this is some sick joke, or if they’ve stuck her in a lunatic asylum because she’s actually, quantifiably lost it, and maybe she has, probably she has, it’s about damn _time_ she has. “I’d be… showing… I…”

“For someone as small in stature as you are,” the nurse chimes in, with a too-bright smile Laurel suddenly wants to punch right off her face, a surge of irrational anger passing through her, “it’s possible you… mistook it for some weight gain. Or bloating. It’s certainly an anomaly at this point in the second trimester, but it’s not impossible. We’ve done an ultrasound and the baby seems to have made it out unscathed. You’re lucky. Both of you.”

They leave her, with that. And Laurel thinks that’s a pretty apt descriptor for her life right about now: a huge _fucking_ anomaly.

 

~

 

She’s pregnant.

She almost died in that fire and she’s pregnant and she didn’t know. Somehow she _didn’t know._

She lies there in that bed in shock for hours, never able to get comfortable, closing her eyes and tossing and turning but finding that sleep eludes her over and over, slipping from her grasp every time she gets close to pinning it down. Suddenly all she can feel is the heaviness in her belly, the bulge she’d mistaken for weight gain, from stress-eating shitty food with too many carbohydrates and drinking too much.

It’d be a lie to say she hadn’t noticed the tightening of her pants, the slight outward curving of her waistline, the increasing struggle to zip herself into clothes that’d once fit her without issue. It hadn’t been enough to worry about – an extra ten pounds on the scale. Strange, but it’s not exactly like she’s had time to go to the gym with all the bodies that’ve needing burying.

She’d ignored it. All of it.

Closed her eyes to it. Been so blind, both intentionally and unintentionally. She’d been nauseous and she’d written it off as stress. She’d been tired and snappish and also written it off as stress. Stress and sadness and missing him. _Frank._

She wants to laugh, suddenly, at the terrible telenovela her life seems to have turned into. Pregnant with Frank’s baby – the child of a killer. A literal cold-blooded murderer, with a body count that only seems to rise by the day.

A goddamn episode of a trashy TLC reality show.

She wants to laugh and she also wants to be sick until she can never eat a scrap of food again.

 

~

 

Bonnie comes to visit her before Frank does, and she’s glad for it.

She approaches a bit cautiously, all hunched in on herself and almost timid, clutching her purse, unsure what she’ll find upon entering. She looks tired, too. Like last night took the last bit of light she’d had in her eyes out of her for good, snuffed it out, and Laurel wants to ask if Frank’s dead, or Wes, or both of them but instead all she can do is stare, blankly, as she takes a seat next to her. Too numb and detached to feel much of anything, not even fear.

“Hey,” she greets, mustering up a weak little smile. “How’re you feeling?”

Laurel doesn’t answer. Something swells in her throat and she can’t, and so she lowers her eyes, terror burrowing its way into her skin, turning her blood to ice in her veins.

“Frank and Wes,” she murmurs, throat tightening and aching. “They were in the house. No one… no one told me if-”

“They’re okay. Both of them. Wes is being treated here. Frank probably needs to be treated here, but he wouldn’t let the paramedics take him.” She pauses, pursing her lips, grave. “Nate… didn’t make it out. He went in to look for survivors and…”

She goes almost dizzy with relief, falling back against the pillow and shutting her eyes and trying to catch her breath, which is hard to do with only one functional lung. She closes her eyes and breathes, lets the sound of her own breathing wash over her, soothe her. _They’re alive. Frank and Wes are alive._

She’s not carrying the child of a dead man. That’s something, at least.

Bonnie sits up slightly, with sudden purpose, and takes in a breath. “Oliver and I… we overheard the doctors say you’re pregnant.” She pauses, meeting her eyes, no judgement, no shock. “Is that true?”

She nods, numb, still too numb to bother denying it, too numb to feel much of anything beyond the tiny heartbeat she’s convinced she can sense somewhere deep inside herself, fluttering away, inexorable, irrefutable evidence of what everyone is telling her. “I… I-I didn’t know.” _Five months and I didn’t know and I’m so dumb, I’m so fucking dumb._

“And it’s Frank’s?”

She nods, again. Bonnie just sits there, processing the information and turning it over in her hands, looking too exhausted by this night to be very shocked by anything.

“He’s outside. He’s… a mess, when he heard you were here, even more after he heard that. The doctors said you’re lucky to be alive.” She pauses, eyes dropping down to her stomach almost of their own volition, as if expecting to find some drastic change there over the course of a few hours. “Both of you, now, I guess.”

 _Both of you._ It makes her stomach lurch and she doesn’t know why.

She _hates_ that and she doesn’t know why, and she does.

“You want me to send him in?” Bonnie asks, finally, and Laurel doesn’t know why, again, but the thought makes her stomach turn, twist up into some unnatural shape. Her skin crawls.

Lila. Mahoney. Annalise’s hitman. Bonnie’s dad – all of them, so much blood on his hands there’s no washing it off, no discernible path to redemption. He’s killed and killed and taken and taken and now he’s given her this, knocked her up, ruined everything, ruined _her_ and this baby. She feels so angry she wants to rip her hair out by the roots, so frustrated with him and sick, God, she feels _sick_ more than anything. She’d made up her mind to get away. Stop chasing after him. Forget she ever knew the man named Frank Delfino at all, that monster. _Her_ monster.

And now, now there’s no escaping him. Now she’s got a belly full of him and there’s no getting away, not now, maybe not ever, and she can’t hate him. Still, after everything, she can’t hate Frank, and that makes her hate _herself_ so much she can’t breathe.

“Not today,” is all she can manage, shaking her head. Nausea roils hot in her gut and she can’t tell if it’s because of the pregnancy or not, thinks she probably ought to be done with that by this point. “I need… I need time.”

Bonnie nods, understandingly. And she goes.

She sleeps, after she’s gone, and dreams of fire. Of screaming and pain and blood and a baby in her arms. And terror.

She dreams of Frank’s hands wrapped around her throat and she wakes up sobbing.

 

~

 

They do an ultrasound, the next morning, so she can hear the heartbeat.

She doesn’t have the heart to tell them she doesn’t want to. She doesn’t want to be a terrible mother; a neglectful mother. So she lets them, and watches the grainy grey image appear on the screen as they guide the wand across her the gentle curve of her stomach, which now seems so much more obvious than it did before, as if she can see it expanding by the second.

The doctor points out the different limbs, the head. It’s a boy, they tell her, smiling, ecstatic. That tiny little bean-shaped blob is her son; so tiny and so impossible after everything but so strong, and she can see him then but somehow he still doesn’t feel real. He feels like a far-off, imagined concept, inside her but millions of miles away, in her body that no longer feels like her own. Invading her. Inhabiting her without her permission.

She’s trying to make herself want this. Want _him_. She really is.

She doesn’t. She can’t.

She’s been drinking – drinking a lot, to cope with the stress of everything. She’d hurt him, somehow. She must’ve. She’d hurt him and he doesn’t deserve that, deserves so much _better_ than her and she can’t do this: have a baby, carry someone inside of her who depends on her for everything. She’s too fucked up and ruined, and he deserves better than murderers for parents. Better than she could give him. She can’t love him, either, not like he’ll need at least, and the thought paralyzes her with fear.

She doesn’t want to bring a baby into this world. This horrible, violent, bloody world. She never had parents who were worth shit; she can’t be a mother if no one ever taught her _how_.

She feels sick, again. She wishes she knew how to stop.

They print out a picture for her to keep at her bedside, as she recovers. And every now and then she looks over at it, and feels so guilty she wants to die, her stomach full of rocks.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers to the photo, to her belly. To him. She doesn’t know what she’s sorry for exactly but she’s sure there’re a million things, past and present and future she’ll have to apologize to him for; so many she doesn’t even know what they are yet. “I’m so sorry.”

 

~

 

She can’t shut Frank out forever, she knows this. She never could.

So on the third day, when she’s finally able to get out of bed and walk around a little, she tells one of the nurses to send him in.

He’s there in the doorway in what must be seconds flat.

“Laurel?”

His voice is thick, raspy. She turns and there he is, so much to take in all at once: from his ripped, ash-covered clothes to the redness around his eyes to the unsteadiness of his gait, like he’s all of two seconds from collapsing in a heap right in front of her. She’d seen him, before the fire. She had gone to Coalport to seek him out, and he’d looked different but somehow he looks even _more_ different, now. Even more of a stranger to her.

Or maybe he was always a stranger. Maybe she never knew him at all.

She’s standing over by the window, staring out of it with disinterest, and turns her head to look at him slowly, every muscle in her body seizing up, heart going a mile a minute and she tries to remind herself to keep calm, not hurt this baby any more than she’s probably done already but she can’t, can’t stamp down that instinctive rush of adrenaline. She can’t breathe, looking at him, into those blue eyes that still look the same to her, look so full of fear and simultaneous relief. Full of too much to discern.

“Hi,” is all she says, voice soft, hollow. His eyes drop down to her stomach and she shifts, uncomfortable, knowing perfectly well what he’s looking for and somehow feeling almost violated by it, by his stare.

She wants to break down in his arms and cry, too, irrationally. But she won’t do that. She’s not weak – not a scared little girl. The world made one hell of a solid attempt to take her out and she’s still standing and that’s how she’s going to stay: standing.

Standing on her own. Without him.

“Are you…” He drifts off, takes another step towards her. He looks like he’s been crying, on the brink of hysteria. Probably he has been. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” She nods, swallowing, because she is; aside from a few broken bones and scrapes and burns, she is. “Yeah, I’m okay.” _I’m not. Not even a little._

“Bonnie told me… she overheard the doctors say-” He cuts himself off, unable to say the word, shaking his head. “Is it true?”

She hesitates, then nods, and that’s all she can do because for some reason she can’t say the word aloud either, can’t accept the fact into her heart or under her skin; keeping it at a distance and pretending it isn’t really real is the only way she’s staving off a chain of what feel like inevitable panic attacks. And again he’s eyeing her, more intently this time, searching her stomach for any sign, the sign that somehow she’d missed, or maybe closed her eyes to on purpose. Maybe she’d known all along, deep down, some subconscious part of her, and that’s why she’d gone looking for him; why she hadn’t been able to stay away. Like her body had been beckoning her to go to him.

“How… how long?”

“Five months,” she answers, stiffly, raising her chin. “Or maybe more. Whenever was the last time we… Before you left.”

Hurt flickers in his eyes. “You didn’t tell me.”

“I didn’t _know_ ,” she breathes, turning away and pacing. “You think I wouldn’t have told you if I knew? I… I don’t know how I missed it, I…” Something hardens in her, suddenly, and she turns to him, jaw clenched. “A-and even if I _had_ known, Frank, you wouldn’t answer my calls. You were _gone_.”

His eyebrows knit together. “Laurel…”

“You left us,” she bites out, the word rolling off her tongue before she even realizes it. She’s not singular, anymore; she’s plural. Us. The two of _us_. “You _left_.”

“And I’m back now,” he urges, voice low. He comes to a stop before her, close but not too close, as if sensing he ought to keep his distance – and he should, _God_ he should, she doesn’t know what’ll happen if he gets any closer, what she’ll do. “I… I know I shouldn’t have left. But I didn’t have a choice, you know that-”

“Yeah, well, you always have a choice,” she chokes out, fending off tears. She doesn’t want to cry. Doesn’t want to be _weak_. She turns away from him, coldly. “And you made yours.”

A pause. Frank shakes his head, lowers his eyes, at a loss for words for a second before he finally meets her eyes again.

“What’re we gonna do?”

We. _We_. Once she would’ve loved to hear those words from him; now, they provoke an almost visceral reaction inside her. She hates them. Hates him. And hates how she _doesn’t_ hate him, how she knows she’ll never be able to. But she’s not stupid either and she knows she can’t be with him now – not after everything, not after this blood-soaked pilgrimage he’s taken home, hurt and destroyed so many people in his path. He’s not the man she knew, standing before her now, even with his eyes brimming with sincerity, with affection, looking at her just like he’d used to do. It’d be so easy to crumble, let him in, let him walk this path with her but she knows better.

Knows she can’t.

“We?” she spits, disbelieving. “There’s no _we_ in this.” The words are agony, like acid on her tongue. Tears come to her eyes and her voice shakes but she remains resolute, her mind made up, chin held high. “I don’t want you anywhere near this baby.”

And if Laurel’s ever seen words destroy a human being, completely dismantle someone, it happens right then, before her eyes.

He sinks, all the hope flowing out of him, and he looks so much heavier right then, weighed down by her words, by the rejection. Something in him fractures, fractures deep and she sees it in his eyes as the tears come spilling up through that breach. He furrows his brow, taken aback, mouth moving without forming words for a moment before he finally, finally, manages to find his voice again somewhere in the rubble.

“Laurel-”

He takes a step towards her. Frigid, she steps back an equal distance. “I don’t want you in this baby’s life. I don’t want him to know you, I-”

“Him?” he mutters, looking almost like he’ll stumble backward, fall to his knees. “It’s-”

“Him. Yeah.” Her voice is strained. She’s crying, too, crying without restraint, the both of them hurting so much it fills up the room, the air between them and she wants to stop, give in, but she won’t. This is right. She knows it is. “It’s a boy. And I don’t _ever_ want him to know you.”

There’s betrayal, behind his eyes. She’s never seen him look like this; so broken, so destroyed, the way he’d destroyed her when he’d told her about Lila and so many times afterward. That’s all they’re good for, it seems like: destroying each other. All they’ve ever _been_ good for.

“Laurel, please-”

He approaches again and she moves to the side, almost recoiling, so terrified that she’ll give in if she lets him too close. She’s shaking, with disgust and terror and longing and so overwhelmed she sways on her feet. She can’t breathe. She can’t breathe all over again and she’s not sure she’s ever going to be able to breathe again, but she has to.

Breathe. Breathe for him. Her baby. He needs her to breathe and slowly, slowly, she remembers how.

“I hate you,” she spits, vicious, not caring, suddenly, how much she hurts him. She _wants_ to hurt him. “Everything you’ve done… Mahoney. Bonnie’s dad. Lila. Her _baby_.” She realizes something and inhales sharply, and aches so deeply, deep in her bones. He’s drawing closer, desperate, and she raises her chin, firing precisely the right ammunition to get him to back away. “She was pregnant and you killed her. Are you going to do that to me too now?”

“Laurel,” he says her name again, almost on a sob. “Don’t, Laurel, you know I’d never…” He drifts off, shaking his head, looking like he’s all of two seconds away from pitching himself down at her feet and pleading with her. “I – what’re you gonna tell him? When… he asks why he doesn’t have a dad, huh? What’re you gonna say?”

“I’ll tell him that you’re dead,” she chokes out, venom in her tone. “I-I’ll tell him that his father was a good man but he’s dead now. I won’t tell him what you were. What you did.” She shakes her head. “I couldn’t do that to him.”

“You can’t.” He’s outright crying now, same as her. She’s never seen him like this, _defeated_ like this. “You… I could… go to the courts. Ask for custody.”

“Do it,” she spits, suddenly livid at the thought – of her _owing_ him something, anything, even the right to lay eyes on the baby inside her for half a second. She raises herself up to her full height, eyes burning, and she must look terrifying because he actually takes a few steps back. “Do it. Sue me for custody. Make me go in front of a judge a-and tell him all the awful things you did and why you’re not fit to be a father.” Another sob. She can’t catch her breath. “Do it, I dare you.”

“Please,” he begs, and he’s begging now without restraint. Beseeching her. “Please Laurel, don’t do this.”

She shakes her head. She’s vicious, now, her words brutal and cutting. “You can’t be a father to this baby. All you’d do is _ruin_ him. And he’s good. So good. Innocent. You don’t deserve him.” She inhales sharply. “And you… you gave up your chance to know him, Frank, you did it to yourself so you don’t you _dare_ blame me.”

“Laurel-”

She’s relentless now, spitting words without restraint. Ruthless and cruel and it’s killing her and somehow at the same time she doesn’t care at all, _wants_ to be cruel to him. Wants to tear him down and break him like him leaving had broken her.

“Don’t come near us,” she bites out through her teeth. “Don’t try to… to contact me and if you do I’ll file a restraining order, don’t think I won’t-”

“Stop,” he tries to tell her. “Laurel, stop, let me explain, let me-”

“Just get out,” she breathes, voice losing all its power. She’s so tired suddenly she can barely hold up her head. Her lungs burn. She looks pathetic, shaking with sobs and sniveling but she’s also planted her feet firmly on the ground and she’s not going to move, not going to change her mind. She’s strong and smart and she’s enough and goddammit she can _do_ this. “Just… just go, Frank, I don’t need you.” _I’ve never needed you._

_I do. I do need you._

“He’s mine too,” he croaks, face crumpled, cheeks wet with tears, same as hers. A broken man, full of self-loathing – that’s what he looks like. Like he hates himself right then so much more than she ever could. “That’s… that’s my kid in there, Laurel-”

“No it’s not,” is all she says. Spits the words at him, as harsh as she can make them. “You’re dead to us. Now go.”

“Don’t do this,” he begs, again. He moves forward, goes to touch her, and she flinches so violently that it breaks something else in him – makes him realize, suddenly, that all of this is for nothing, that there’s no changing her mind. And when he does realize that she watches it overcome him, defeat him, beat at him until he looks like a dead man walking; hopeless. Still he gives one last, weak, abortive effort, his voice low, trembling. “Please don’t do this, Laurel, please-”

“ _Go_.” She sucks in a breath to steady herself. Firm. She stares him down and doesn’t waver for a second. “Go before I call security.”

He gives her one long last look. She can see there’s no more fight left in him; he knows it won’t do any good. And so he backs away, slowly, all teary-eyed and destroyed. And _God_ she wants so bad to tell him to come back, that _yes_ , she does need him and _yes_ , this is his baby and she wants to do this together, that the only way they’ll make it through this is together – but she doesn’t.

She learned her lesson, loving him the first time. Letting him in. She won’t make that mistake again.

So he goes, and she lets him. She lets him walk out of her life, _their_ lives, and it’s only after he’s gone that she sinks down to her knees on the cold tile floor, one hand wrapped around her middle, and sobs until she’s numb.

 

~

 

It’s two weeks before they release her from the hospital.

She goes back to class and the clinic within days, in spite of her doctor’s advice and in spite of Wes’s and Bonnie’s and everyone’s protestations, insisting she should be on bedrest – “for the baby.” Always _for the baby_. She thinks she’ll go crazy if she isn’t busy. If all she’s good for is sitting around and getting fatter and being _pregnant._

_We get a lot of you around here. Smart, idealistic girls who come to law school to help the less fortunate, only to take a corporate job after graduation which they then quit the second they get pregnant 'cause they'd rather stay home. For the child, of course._

Fuck Frank. _Fuck_ him. She’s not going to prove him right.

Before she’d been blind to the changes in her body; now she’s hyper-aware of everything. The inescapable expanding of her stomach. The swelling in her breasts and ankles. The weight gain. Her ravenous hunger and constant exhaustion. The cravings – for Italian food, usually. Like some kind of sick, twisted joke of fate all she ever wants to eat anymore is Italian food, and she tries to pretend it doesn’t kill her when she rolls over at three AM, alone beneath cold sheets, desperate for the food Frank would cook with Frank nowhere to be found.

A month passes. Six months, now.

He’s keeping his word, staying away. It’s killing her and she’s sure it’s killing him too, wherever he is; Coalport or Ohio or California or Mexico – she hasn’t seen him since that day at the hospital. She’d shut him out. Been cruel and taken his son away from him. But no, _no_ , it was right. She _knows_ it was right. He’s a murderer and he can’t be a father to this baby even if he believes he can. He’s too fundamentally fucked-up to do anything but fuck their son up too.

Maybe she is, too. Too fucked-up to raise a child. Sometimes she lies awake at night, terrified of that very thing. And alone.

She knows she isn’t alone – not really. She has Wes and he’d promised to be there for her but he has Meggie and she knows Meggie will always come first, not some other woman pregnant by another guy, and she doesn’t blame him for that. The way he looks at her is different, now that he knows about the baby. Like he thinks she’s been poisoned by Frank. Ruined. And the others are there for her too, like always but even they act different around her. More distant. Almost like they pity her.

She feels so completely, utterly _alone_ – until the first time she feels him stirring inside of her.

She’s with Bonnie when it happens. She feels like Bonnie understands her, somehow, on some level she can’t quite decipher. She gives her advice, recommendations on sleeping positions, things to do to get rid of her aches and pains as she swells all over – oddly specific, almost like she’s had to do them herself. It’s Thursday and she’s exhausted after a long, particularly brutal day, and so she doesn’t turn down Bonnie’s offer when the other woman tells her to come back to her apartment with her after work, let her make her dinner and get her off her feet for a while.

She’s being a bit atypically nice, but Laurel isn’t about to question it.  

“God, my back’s been killing me,” she admits as she plops down onto her couch, feeling like a lead weight and just about as heavy as one.

Bonnie walks over, handing her a pillow to place beneath her head, then holding out another. “Here. Put this between your legs and lay on your side. It helps.”

“You know a lot about this,” she remarks, letting out a sigh and relaxing. “Where’d you become such an expert?”

Bonnie hesitates, something indiscernible flashing behind her eyes. She stops where she is and turns to her, suddenly serious.

“I was pregnant too, once. That’s how.”

Laurel freezes. “What? I – when?”

She hesitates again, then sinks down onto the coffee table in front of her, voice low and measured but still with palpable, age-old traces of pain. “I was fifteen. Too young. And I was so small, too. I remember… how much it all hurt. All the time. My back and my ankles. It feels like having an alien invader in your body, in a lot of ways.”

“Who… who’s was it?” she asks, then corrects herself. “You don’t, um… you don’t have to tell me but-”

“It was my father’s.”

All the air goes out of her. She does deathly-still, on the sofa beneath her, and she opens her mouth but the words die on her tongue, mind rushing at a million miles per hour. Her father. Bonnie’s father. He’d raped her. When she was just a _girl_. Gotten her pregnant.

 _Frank_.

Frank.

“Oh my God,” she breathes, “That was… that was why Frank…”

Something hardens, in Bonnie’s face. “He made… my life hell, for sixteen years. Living hell.” She pauses, swallowing, steeling herself to continue. “So yes. Frank killed him for me, and I’m not sorry he’s dead. I’m glad he’s dead.” Another pause. She shakes her head, solemn. “I lost the baby at seven months. My body just wasn’t ready, to carry it to term. And maybe it was for the best.”

She shakes her head, breathless. “I thought… Frank did that to hurt you. Killed him.”

“No,” Bonnie says, giving her a shaky smile. “He did it because he loved me. And I’m not saying vigilante justice is right.” She thinks, for a moment, then meets her eyes again. “But he did it for me.”

There’s a lump in her throat, suddenly, stubborn as ever. She feels tears in her eyes, too, before she can ward them off; with her hormones hopelessly confused and rewired that’s all she ever seems to do anymore: cry.

“I told him to stay away,” she murmurs, sniffling. She glances down at her stomach, still small, still mostly hidden beneath her new, looser closet of blouses and pants with elastic waistbands, but far more visible now. “Told him… I didn’t want the baby to know him, because of what he did. To Lila. All the others.”

“I know,” Bonnie replies. “He told me.”

“You talked to him?”

She nods. “He’s back in the city. For good. Working at his dad’s shop, I think. And… you’re probably right, that he’s not a good man. And that he probably wouldn’t be a good father.” She sighs, and stands suddenly, taking a step away from her. “I’ll go start dinner.”

“Wait,” she calls out, and Bonnie stops, looking back at her. She shifts on her side, fidgeting beneath her gaze. “You… you think it’s the right thing to do?”

She doesn’t say anything, for a long moment – the longest in the world. Then, finally, she seems to make up her mind and glances up at Laurel, stoic, her face not betraying a hint of emotion.

“I can’t tell you what’s right for you, Laurel.”

She turns, and she makes her way across the room into her little kitchenette, the conversation clearly put to rest. And she lies there for a while, listening to the sizzling of the pots and pans as Bonnie makes dinner, one hand idly stroking her stomach, tracing up and down the bulge forming there, growing larger by the day. There won’t be any hiding it, soon; it’ll be obvious and she’ll be huge, and somehow she can’t help but ponder, maybe a bit selfishly, how humiliating that’ll be, for everyone to see. And know.

The stupid girl who goes and fucks her boss and gets knocked up – that’s what she is. Maybe Frank had been right, after all.

She’s in the middle of drowning in self-pity when she feels it, for the first time.

It’s soft, barely even perceptible. Like a butterfly’s wings flitting around inside her, just beneath her skin. She frowns, and reaches down and places her hand over it, and it’s too tiny to feel from the outside but she can feel it from the _inside_ , knows without a doubt it’s there. Each one is like a little earthquake; world-shattering and life-changing to her but still so tiny, like her son is telling her that he’s there because he knows she needs to know. Reminding her she’s not alone. That she’s _never_ alone.

Reminding her that he’s strong. And she is too.

“Oh my God,” she breathes, sitting up fast enough that it catches Bonnie’s attention across the room. The other woman frowns and abandons her cooking, crossing the room in seconds to stand beside her. She props herself up, slowly, hand pressed against her stomach. Marveling at it. Almost too stunned to breath. “I think… I-I think I can feel him.” She laughs, beaming up at her. “I can feel him.”

Bonnie takes a seat on the couch beside her, looking sad, almost. “He feel strong?”

“I think so,” she manages, nodding. She gulps, teary-eyed. “I thought maybe I’d hurt him. With… how much I drank, before. And the fire, the smoke, I thought… But he’s okay.” _He’s okay. And he’s mine._

 _And I can do this._ We _can._

“You’re both fighters,” Bonnie remarks, grinning over at her. “Both stronger than you know.”

She laughs, again. Laughs for the first time in forever. She’s always been strong. She knows she can do this – alone, even if she has to.

She’s been through hell and she came out on top, and she can do this too.

 

~

 

She tries not to think about him but she always does, one way or another.

She thinks about him when she wakes up in the mornings, alone, and wonders where he is, what he’s doing, if maybe he’s thinking of her, too. She thinks about him as she swells out like a balloon, growing bigger by the hour and more uncomfortable and so much more scared. Swelling with his child. Part of him, so _much_ of him. It’s impossible to look at herself in the mirror now and _not_ think of him.

She thinks about him when she goes to doctor’s appointments by herself, and looks around the room at all the other women with their partners by their sides, steadfast and attentive, and feels that sinking, sickening lonesome feeling. She goes sometimes, with Wes or Michaela. But it never feels quite the same.

She thinks about him when the others throw her a makeshift baby shower, and then proceed to spend four hours trying, and failing miserably, to assemble a crib. She thinks of him during what should be a happy time – the happiest of her life.

She thinks of him because she _isn’t_ happy. Not really. Not even a little.

 

~

 

He does as she says. He stays away.

There’s only one time he doesn’t.

It’s late at night, past one AM. Eight months down, one to go. She’s tossing and turning in her bed like always, burning up one second and freezing cold the next, flipping madly from side to side and finally, just when she gets comfortable and starts to drift-

There’s a knock on her door. Three short raps.

She frowns, and somehow manages to roll off the bed and haul herself to her feet, though moving is becoming increasingly harder to do with each passing week, and sometimes she feels a lot like a turtle who might roll over onto her back one day and never be able to right herself. And she may be sleep-addled as she makes her way out into her living room but she’s still cautious enough to glance through her peephole before opening the door, standing on her tiptoes and leaning in.

There’s nothing there. No one.

Bewildered, she yanks open the door and finds herself met with only the darkness – and a small shape resting on the ground that she can barely make out, catching her eye.

A teddy bear.

Small and brown and missing an eye, clearly old and well-loved by someone. There’s a ribbon around its neck with a note attached, and she frowns as she picks it up, feeling its coarse, patchy coat beneath her fingertips. She holds up the note after a moment, and she has to squint in the darkness to read it but soon the words become clear, scrawled in all-too-familiar sloppy handwriting.  

_I know you said to stay away. I have been. I will. I promise._

_This was mine when I was little. You don’t have to tell him where it came from or anything._

_I just wanted him to have it._

_\- F_

~

 

She places the bear in the crib and keeps the note.

She looks at it more than she should, tracing the imprints in the little paper where his pen had pressed into it. Once or twice she almost dials his number. Tells him she needs him. Tells him she can’t do this alone and she’s so scared that sometimes, more often than not, she cries herself to sleep, afraid of everything. Downright terrified.

But then she thinks of Lila. Lila and her baby, the two lives he’d snuffed out. And she turns her heart to steel, and tosses her phone away. He made his bed. He made his choice. She’s doing the right thing.

Except she’s no longer sure she is.

 

~

 

She dreams of pain. Like being stabbed in the stomach, over and over. Relentless. And pressure – so much pressure and then some great release, like a floodgate opening, dam breaking.

She dreams about pain and wakes up with the sheets soaked beneath her and a twinge in her belly, and she knows it’s time.

She calls Wes, who in turn calls everyone else and sends them spiraling into a panic. Connor is at her building with his car and the others in record time, eyeing her nervously as he speeds to the hospital like he thinks she’s about to up and pop right there in the passenger’s seat, and going on and on about “you’re sure you can… hold it in, right? I mean, it’s just that this is a new car and I just got these seats put in and-” until Michaela and Oliver screech at him to shut the fuck up and drive faster. Wes and Michaela go in with her once they arrive, doing their best to shush her, console her, though their words fall mostly on deaf ears. They aren’t the words she wants to hear, from the only person she wants to see.

She can’t call him. She won’t.

They settle her in and the hours pass, excruciatingly slowly. The pains aren’t bad at first but they build, build until they feel like they’re splitting her open and gutting her and slicing at her insides. She buckles underneath the force of them as they come and go, moaning and groaning and clutching Wes’s hand for dear life until he’s going red in the face. After a while she sends the both of them away – she doesn’t want them to see her like this. _Broken down_ like this; animalistic, legs splayed wide with not a single fucking scrap of dignity left in her.

She won’t call Frank. She won’t.

“You’re seven centimeters dialated, dear,” the nurse chirps sometime around two AM – or maybe three or four, she no longer has a solid grasp on time – her head popping up from between her legs, like it’s some kind of great news when all it does is make dread harden in Laurel’s stomach like a stone. “Are you sure you don’t want to give the father a call?”

“No,” she grinds out, jaw clenched, forehead soaked with sweat and breathing ragged. She raises her eyes to the ceiling, refusing to look at her. “No, this baby doesn’t have a father.”

The woman gives her an odd look but doesn’t press. And soon, she leaves her again, leaves her alone with the sterile white room, shivering and sweating beneath the sterile white sheets, rough as sandpaper on her skin.

It gets worse, the pain. Won’t stop – only crescendos and builds and builds and somehow, even when she’s sure it can’t get worse it always does, manages to prove her wrong and laugh in her face. She’d refused the epidural and she realizes now how fucking dumb a decision that was; she’d trade just about anything for numbness, right about now, for a haze of drugs, any kind of relief. She throws up, once or twice. Loses control of her bladder. It’s not glamourous, not like childbirth in the movies, nothing like she thought it would be.

It breaks her. Makes her almost delirious. She starts hearing him, his voice, as clear as he’d be if he were standing beside her, all around her. She can see him – the way he’d looked the last time she’d seen him, in this same hospital in a room just like this one. How broken and full of self-loathing he’d been, but only know he’s at her bedside looking just the same, wanting to touch her but restraining, watching her like a sentinel. Staying away. Like she’d told him.

_Please, Laurel. I don’t know a lot, but I love you._

_I don’t know a lot, but I love you._

_I love you._

_I love you._

And it’s in the middle of that delirium that she finally asks one of the nurses for her phone, and swallows her pride, and dials his number.

“I need you,” is all she tells him, gritting her teeth, biting back her tears. “I need you, Frank.”

 

~

 

 He comes. Of course he does.

He comes to her even in the dead of night, wild-eyed and panicked, and when he steps through the door for a second she’s not sure he’s real, if she’s delirious still and seeing things. He looks like he had before he’d left: beard and hair grown back but patchy, in jeans and a t-shirt like he’s only just rolled out of bed. He looks like a dream. A mirage.

She’d told him to stay away from her and he’d done it. But _she’s_ never been able to stay away from _him_ , no matter how hard she’s tried. She’d told herself she didn’t need him and maybe that’s true, maybe she doesn’t really need him for this, maybe she could bear this on her own if she had to.

But she _wants_ him here. Needing and wanting are two distinctively different things and she knows that now. She does.

“Laurel,” he breathes her name and it makes her weak, makes her melt back against the bed where she lays, curled onto her side, choking down her cries when really she wants to scream loud enough for the entire city to hear. He goes to her side immediately, not hesitating or keeping his distance, not shocked by the sight of her. He sweeps strands of sweat-soaked hair out of her face and murmurs soothing sweet-nothing’s to her, taking his place back at her side so naturally it’s as if he’d never left for a second. “Hey, Laurel, it’s okay. I’m here now. It’s all good, I got you.”

“I’m sorry,” she chokes out, feeling another contraction clamping low in her belly, burning hot and brutal. “I’m sorry I said… everything I said, I was wrong-”

“That don’t matter now,” he tells her, shaking his head vehemently, placing his hands on her cheeks. “’S all over. Only thing that matters is I’m here now, okay?

“ _God_ , I can’t do this,” she chokes on the words, gritting her teeth so hard she thinks she’s liable to break them into bits soon. She’s beyond caring who sees her like this, now. Beyond caring about anything besides enduring this hell. “I can’t, it’s… too much, it _hurts_ …”

“Hold my hand.” He smirks, and it warms her all over, and for a moment with him the pain is distant, some far-off, barely perceptible echo. “Break it, if you have to. Whatever you need.”

She almost does, almost _does_ snap every bone in his hand, but her grip loosens once the contraction recedes, pulling away like the low tide and giving her a moment of respite. She stays rolled onto her side, losing herself in the feeling of him: stroking her cheek, shushing her, so tender she could cry.

She’d been so wrong to shut him out. Push him away. All these months, all these months, God, they’d wasted so much _time_ and he’s missed so _much_ , too much to recover, too much to smooth over like it’d never happened.

“I was wrong,” she tells him, catching her breath for a moment. She sniffs. “I thought… Everything I thought, I was wrong. And I’m sorry I said those things to you, about… him never knowing you, I just…”

“Hey, you didn’t do anything wrong, you hear me?” he tells her, firmly. “Nothin’. I should never’ve left you – that was on me. And the things I did…” His Adam’s apple bobs in his throat. She can hear the strain in his words, when he speaks again. “I’m never leavin’ you again. Either of you. I… I’m gonna have to die, first.”

She gives a watery laugh, out of nowhere. “I got your teddy bear.”

His eyes light up, like she hasn’t seen in so long. Like she’s missed _so much_. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she breathes, and her face crumples, guilt overcoming her. She can feel a contraction building, rising, making her muscles seize up, turning against her, attacking in droves. “I… I’m just sorry, I’m – oh _God_ , fuck, no, not again-”

“You can do this,” he murmurs, voice like silk in her ear. He presses a kiss to her sweaty forehead, fingers laced into hers. Anchoring her. Grounding her. “I got you. And I love you. I love you so fucking much.”

He has her. He’s got her. He loves her. He’s _with_ her. She doesn’t know how she ever thought she could do this without him.

He’s got her. And they wait.

 

~

 

When the hour comes it’s not graceful, or pretty, or easy.

She heaves with all the force in her body to push, every scrap of her energy, bearing down and sweating and moaning and swearing at Frank in a barely-intelligible mix of Spanish and English. She’s barely aware of his words in her ear, the encouragements of the doctor and nurse. All she can hear is her own heart beating, beating so fast like it’s going to explode any second, like it can’t take the strain and maybe she can’t either, maybe something’s wrong – it’s a month too soon and after the fire, after what she’d been through something must be, with the baby or with her. She sputters words that don’t make any sense, speaking in tongues. Clings to Frank like he’ll disappear the instant she lets go.

She can’t do this. She isn’t strong enough and she was stupid to think she was. She was so stupid and she says that aloud, keeps repeating it, she can’t, _she can’t, I can’t, I can’t_ , as she wars with every muscle in her body, vicious. And she’s known pain but this is pain beyond pain; agony that reaches all the way down to her toes, tearing her apart. She feels like she’s being torn apart, split open and she is, she can _feel_ it

And then it all ends – and there’s a moment of silence, and everything goes still, as still as a dream, everything surreal and too-bright, blinding underneath the white fluorescent lights. She can’t breathe but she waits for the sound of the cry, her son’s cry, _their_ son’s cry.

Nothing.

Silence. A damning sort of silence.

She raises her head weakly to look. And suddenly all she sees is a flurry of movement, and a look of barely-concealed panic on the doctor’s face.

“He’s in respiratory distress,” he barks. “Get him to the NICU. _Now_.”

“What’s going on?” she asks, voice weak, hoarse. She looks to Frank and he’s standing, trying to cross the room and follow, but the nurse is putting a hand on his chest and urging him to stay where he is before he can. Her eyelids droop, body giving into its exhaustion and shutting down. “What’s… w-what’re they doing with him? Let me… lemme hold him.” She looks around, confused, from face to face, the nurses then to Frank’s, and when she sees how horrified he looks her stomach turns. “Where… what’s going on?”

No one gives her an answer. All she can catch are brief, murmured phrases,. _Underdeveloped lungs. Respiratory distress._ From the smoke. The smoke and the fire. It must be.

_No. No no no no no._

“It’s gonna be okay,” Frank finally manages to tell her, though he doesn’t seem quite so sure himself. “It, uh… ‘S no big deal, probably. He’ll be okay.” He somehow musters up a wink, holds her hand just a little tighter. “He’s our boy, huh? He’s okay. He will be.”

 

~

 

She wants desperately to sleep but she can’t. And an hour passes, and they clean her up. And there’s still no news. No nothing.

That’s when Frank’s calm starts to slip.

“They should be… they should be tellin’ us something,” he murmurs, seated in the chair next to her head, hands folded. Rocking back and forth, almost infantile in a way. “By now. Why aren’t they – _fuck_.”

She shakes her head, so sore and aching she can hardly move, burning between her legs, bloody and torn. “Frank…”

“That’s how this works, huh?” he asks, suddenly pointed, tearful. “Eye for an eye. After what I did.” He looks at her, suddenly as small as a child. So afraid. “Wasn’t… his fault, he… he never did anythin’ wrong, that was me, I-” He drifts off, speaking as if in a trance, unaware that she’s even beside him. “Lila. Lila and her baby, and Annalise, that was _me_.”

“Stop.” She feels her stomach churn. She turns away from him, cold all over. Freezing. “Stop, Frank, just… _stop_.”

He stops. He sees the pain in her eyes and he does. And they wait. Grim. Solemn.

She can’t stop replaying his words in her head. _Eye for an eye. Eye for an eye._

_Life for a life._

 

~

 

Laurel thinks she could cry when the doctor returns with a smile on his face. And she does, a little. Or a lot.

“You can see him now. He’s stable.”

They dress her in a fluffy pink robe, and Frank wheels her down to the NICU; rows upon rows of incubators, all sterile and robotic and unfriendly-looking, until the nurse comes a stop in front of one of the little clear cubes and nods down at it, bright-eyed, beaming – no doubt a smile she’s worn a hundred and one times before.

“There he is,” she tells them. “He’s stabilized, now. Hopefully in a week or so we’ll have him out of here.”

“He’s okay?” she asks, choked up. “His lungs…?”

“Were underdeveloped, slightly. He was born a month too early, or it could’ve been because of… your medical history, with the smoke inhalation. But he’ll be all right.” She smiles, and goes to leave them. “I’ll give you three a moment together.”

_Three._

It makes her smile, smile like a fool, all her fear melting away and flowing off of her. And then she leans in, looking closer – and she swears she stops breathing altogether for a second.

He’s the tiniest thing she’s ever seen, almost too tiny to look like a doll, so petite he barely seems real. His skin is all pink and shriveled, head of hair thin and dark and downy, tiny form dwarfed by the clear plastic encasing him. His eyes are closed, and there’re all manner of little wires and tubes around him, poking out of him. And she thinks he looks like she probably did all those months ago, covered in ashes and half-dead, when they’d told her about him for the first time. She’d made it, and he had too, against all odds.

She’s still standing and he will be too. She knows it for sure when she sees him. Knows he’s strong – same as her. She can sense it.

Call it a mother’s intuition. She _knows_ it.  

“Look at him,” she breathes, reaching into the little hole in the side of the incubator and lightly, very lightly, taking his hand. He moves when she does, kicking his tiny legs, so frail and breakable but hers. Hers and his and _theirs_. “Look, Frank, look at him.”

“I am,” he chuckles, voice thick, tearful. “That’s, uh… that’s really him, huh?”

“All these months…” she exhales shakily, captivated by every minute detail of her son. “He never felt real, and…”

“Thank you,” he says suddenly, the words bursting out like he hadn’t exactly been meaning to say them. She looks back at him, furrowing her brow.

“For what?”

“I… I dunno. Lettin’ me be here.” He looks at her, eyes gentle, gaze almost reverent. “I thought… I was never gonna get to meet him. And he’s beautiful. He’s just…” He clears his throat. “He’s everything.”

Laurel moves her hand back, suddenly, and looks at him, wiping the tears from her cheeks. “Here. Here, hold his hand.”

Frank bristles, at first, lowering his eyes. “Nah, I… it’s fine, you hold it for now. I can do it later-”

She knows what he’s thinking, right then. That he’ll ruin him. Hurt him somehow, like she’d told him she would, simply because of who he is, what he’s done. She can see it in his eyes and it breaks her heart, to know how badly she’d wounded him with those words, with her desire to drive him away. How much damage she’d done to him.

“Hold his hand,” she repeats. “He’s your son. And you won’t… you won’t hurt him. Or ruin him. I was wrong, about all that.” She pauses, giving him a little smile. “All you’ll ever do is love him.”

Her words make him perk up, slightly. And so he reaches out, slowly, with all the gentleness in the world, and grasps his tiny fist between two of his fingers. He’s so big and their son is so tiny, so, so impossibly tiny, and impossible – he _is_ impossible. He came out of all the bad, all the horror, all the death and destruction; something so impossibly beautiful, speck of bright light in darkness. He came from them, from nothing at all and he’s so pure that she knows right then they don’t deserve a creature like him. They never will.

But they’ll love him. That’s all they can do: love him, love him so much he doesn’t know what to do with it. Love him so much all he _knows_ is love.

It’s all they _can_ do.

“Hey there little guy,” Frank coos, eyes lit up like she’s never seen him look before, all wide-eyed, childlike wonder and fascination, so much so it bursts out of him and fills the air and flows into her. “Hey, what’s goin’ on? I don’t know if you can see us, but, uh… it’s your mom and your dad. Your big dumb dad. And we love you. And… when we finally get to hold you?” He chuckles, sniffling. “You best believe we’re never gonna put you down, little man. So get ready.” He smiles, again, and it falters, and it shakes but it’s a smile, the brightest smile she’s ever seen on him. “And get better, huh?”

“Yeah,” she chimes in, and laughs through her tears. “Yeah, get better for us.”

They stay there in silence for a moment like that, content, not wanting to move for anything in the world. Finally, Frank breaks it and turns his head to look at her, and reaches out where he’s crouched beside her, taking her hand and pressing a scratchy kiss to the back of it, gentle. Overflowing with devotion.

“I’m sorry,” she says, before he can open his mouth. “I’m so sorry I shut you out, for… all these months…”

“Hey. What’d I say?” he chides, teasingly. “It don’t matter now. I’m here, now. And… you’re have a hell of a time gettin’ rid of me again, ‘cause I’m stickin’ around this time. For good.”

For a long minute Laurel just looks at him, wordlessly, stunned. Because she’s seen his darkness, seen the most depraved, worst parts of him but she’s also seen the light; the good in him, the man who can be a father, who can be her partner in this. The angel and the devil; the man behind the monster. And she loves him, all of him. Completely, wholly, irrevocably _she loves him_. She’s never stopped, even all those months, carrying his child, always with a part of him inside her, always with him held close. She’d loved him so much then, every day, but she loves him even more now; loves him in that same impossible way she loves their son. Impossible. Incredible. So much it feels like it’s drowning her, sometimes, but it’s a beautiful, blissful kind of drowning; a fall she never wants to stop falling, over and over.

It still frightens her, sometimes, just how _much_ he’s able to make her feel: good and bad. And everything.

Everything. He makes her feel everything.

 

~

 

What they had once is broken. Laurel knows that and she knows he knows it too. Broken and sowed with seeds of distrust and darkness, and maybe it can never be what it was, once.

Or maybe… maybe it can be more.

Maybe they’ve got a shot, now; a real shot. To start over and live truthfully with each other, with their son. It won’t be easy. They’ve got so much to figure out; so much for him to explain he could talk for hours and still have more to tell her, and she him. And they will. They’ll do that when the time is right.

But for now all she wants to do is rest. For now she curls up in her creaky hospital bed and he curls up next to her, lips pressed to her temple, stroking a hand through her sweaty hair. For now she lets herself breathe him in, lets herself silently reacquaint herself with the man she hasn’t seen in ages, who she’d convinced herself she would never see again.

Inevitable. He – _this_ – has always felt inevitable to her. And maybe their son didn’t, maybe he came out of nowhere, crashed in on their lives all devastating and beautiful as a meteor – but it feels right. It’s going to be hard. She knows this and he knows it too; it’s unspoken, hanging in the air, the elephant in the room.

They can deal with that later too. All of it.

“What about… Frank Jr.?” he suggests, playing with her fingers idly, her head nestled into his shoulder and her body curled into his.

She scoffs, on the brink of drifting off but letting his voice reel her back in. “We are _not_ naming him Frank Jr., you narcissist.”

“Yeah, that’s probably a good call,” he concedes. “The world doesn’t exactly need another one of me runnin’ around. What about… Lorenzo?”

That earns him a chuckle. “No.”

“Why not?”

“It’s too… fancy,” she mutters, eyelids fluttering shut, voice muffled by his shirt. “And he’s only a newborn. And I can’t see myself holding him in my arms and calling him _Lorenzo_. Let’s just… talk about this in the morning.”

“You gonna make our kid spend his first night on earth nameless?”

“I’m sure he’ll manage,” she quips, a sleepy smirk on her face. “If he’s anything like you he’s resilient.”

“And if he’s anything like _you_ ,” he undertones, “he’s gonna be a total badass.”

He plays it off as a joke but Laurel catches the hidden meaning, the deflection, the subtle hint that he secretly doesn’t want their son to be anything like him at all, would much rather he be all her. She catches that hint of doubt, that hint of creeping fear, fear that he’ll do everything she’d said he would: ruin him, steal his innocence, damn him. And so she squeezes his hand, holds it tight, tells him without a word that he won’t, and she can sense, somehow, that maybe he starts to believe it too, just the slightest bit.

So she lets herself drift off, falling asleep at his side. And they’ll bicker more in the morning, she knows. They have time to bicker. Time for everything.

They have the morning, now. Tomorrow morning and a million more.


End file.
